BPM or Workflow ?

This post referred in Todd's post has resurrected an old debate. What exactly is the value provided by BPM over traditional workflow solutions?

Those who have worked with traditional workflow solutions know, how there is no concept of end to end process in workflow solutions. The workflow solutions were mainly ground-up automation tools to complete various process steps executed in back-end systems. Even if you put in the metric collection framework (which I dont believe is a trivial task) on top of it and gained an end to end process visibility, you could not do much with it. Changing the processes in those ground up tools was not as easy as in the modern BPM tools.

Again all BPM tools are not the same and may have issues in implementation. But thats no reason not to move to correct technology option. Ofcourse there may be reasons not to move to BPM technology. (e.g. you have limited budget and BPM is not your highest priority pain point). But the argument that, workflow solution with metric collection framework on top of it is equivalent or better than BPM tool, in my opinion is not valid.

BPM tools are closed loop solutions. You can define processes, operationalise them, analyse them while in operation and take corrective actions. Moreover BPM tools are open standards based. The process steps to underlying services integration, is thru SOA and that too is becoming part of standards. It would be better to hitch your ride on open standards based closed loop solution which integrates well with underlying services, than go for complex solutions involving multiple proprietary tools.